


Parentheses

by dogpoet



Series: Punctuation [3]
Category: Lewis - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Psychics, palmistry, personal maths, punctuation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogpoet/pseuds/dogpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t like him to notice punctuation, but now he saw it everywhere. Even when Hathaway pointed out the life lines on their palms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parentheses

**Author's Note:**

> > Beta by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/profile)[**simoneallen**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/)
>> 
>> I'm having some trouble with the ampersands in this story -- they are not showing up in reader files (epub, mobi). I have alerted the AO3 support team, but at present, it is still an issue.

Laura was already crouched beside the body, which lay in the wet grass. She looked up as Lewis and Hathaway approached.

“Not the best way to wake up, is it?” she said.

Laura. Lewis hadn’t yet thought through what he’d say to her. Did he have to — yes, he had to tell her. Something. If not everything. She was sharp as a tack, and she’d cotton on whether he mentioned it or not. Better if it came from him.

“Poor sod,” he said, bending down.

She indicated with a blue glove: “He had a run-in with a blunt instrument. I can’t tell you more than that just yet. I’d say it was something metal if I had to guess.”

Lewis nodded. Across from him, Hathaway snapped on gloves and delicately extracted the man’s wallet from his jacket pocket.

“Avery Little,” Hathaway read off the licence. He rifled through the rest of the wallet’s contents. Something caught his eye.

“What?” Lewis asked.

Hathaway handed Lewis a business card. Lewis took it, aware of the slight contact between their gloved fingers. The card was glossy and black with gold lettering. A bloody psychic! How many of them could there be in Oxford? It wasn’t the victim. Someone he knew, then. Or someone he’d consulted.

“They’re seeking you out, sir,” Hathaway said, trying not to smile.

Lewis grimaced, remembering Ursula Van Tessell. “Last time a psychic was involved, look what happened.” He glanced at the card again and sighed. “But it’s a lead.”

‘ ’

Half of Lewis’s mind mulled over the facts of the case as they drove to the psychic’s listed address. The other half was on Hathaway, who sat on the passenger side, quiet as usual. He was no less mysterious now that they’d…whatever it was they’d done. What would Lyn say, Lewis wondered. Did she even need to know? It might not even be whatever it was in two months’ time. Impossible to say. Lewis sneaked a look at James, then quickly turned away when he found Hathaway’s eyes on him.

“Sir?”

Lewis shook his head. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

On the timeline of his life, there were befores and afters. The biggest was Before Val and After Val. She was the most important marker in his life, even more important than his parents, whose deaths had brought him to his knees, but Val had been there beside him. He hadn’t been raised religious. God wasn’t something he thought about that much, and his parents’ deaths hadn’t made him start. It was real people who got you through, wasn’t it? Maybe not for Hathaway, who had different ideas about God, big ideas. Maybe God had got him through the rough patches.

Sometimes he thought of his life like one of those equations he’d learnt about in maths, the kind with negative numbers set off by parentheses.

(MUM & DAD) + VAL + (LYN & TOM) + MORSE + (-MUM) + (-DAD) + (-MORSE) + (-VAL) + HATHAWAY = ROBBIE’S LIFE

That was life as you got older, more minuses than plusses. A lot of minuses. And then Hathaway had come along and taken up all of Lewis’s working hours and a fair number of his non-working hours. When had that happened?

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost missed the address. He pulled the car to the kerb just past the correct block of flats.

“Let’s hope this one’s better than the last one,” Lewis said as he walked up the front path beside Hathaway.

“It would be hard to be worse.” Hathaway rapped the brass knocker against the door three times, his lean form slouching carelessly.

Lewis wondered why he’d begun doing that. To feel less tall, he supposed. Blend in more. The gaps between his shirt buttons puckered up as he raised and lowered his arm. Shirts too fitted. Lewis got a peek at bits of pale skin again. Hathaway noticed him looking.

“You might buy bigger shirts,” Lewis commented, feeling old.

Hathaway looked down at his shirt, but before he could respond, the door opened, revealing a man who seemed to take a page out of Hathaway’s book when it came to clothes. He was in his fifties, with neatly trimmed grey hair and a watch that had probably cost a pretty penny.

“Mr French?” Lewis verified, holding up his badge. “Detective Inspector Lewis. Sergeant Hathaway. Can we ask you some questions?”

The man studied them carefully for a moment before saying, “Of course. Come in.”

They followed Mr French into what must have been his office, and sat at a small, circular table.

French scrutinised Lewis. “You’ve come about someone you’ve lost. I can see it. A very deep loss. Ah, your wife —” Confusion crossed his face, and he glanced from Hathaway to Lewis.

“We’re not here about me,” Lewis said, irritated. Bloody psychics, guessing at someone’s past. “What can you tell us about a man named Avery Little?”

French answered smoothly. “I promise my clients complete confidentiality.”

“If you were really a psychic, you would know that Little is dead.” Lewis had always known psychics were a bunch of nonsense.

“Oh,” Mr French said. “That’s — He has a powerful energy. That would explain his presence remaining so strong even after —”

“Enough of his ‘presence’. I need to know why he came to see you,” Lewis interrupted.

French raised an eyebrow. “Nothing sinister, I’m afraid. A simple matter of the heart. She didn’t return his sentiments. He wanted my advice on how to proceed.”

“Did he tell you who the object of his affections was?” Hathaway asked.

“He didn’t, but he did say he worked with her.”

“Was there a specific reason why it was unrequited?”

Leave it to Hathaway to ask irrelevant questions, Lewis thought.

“She’s married,” French answered. “That’s all I know. You might — the landlord. I received a clear negative impression of his landlord. You might direct your investigation that way.”

Lewis stood. “Thanks. You’ve been helpful.” Landlord, indeed.

French escorted them to the door. Before shutting it, he said, “If you’re interested, I’d be delighted to offer you a free session. I could answer some of your questions about —”

“No, thanks,” Lewis cut French off with finality, waving his hand. When the door had closed, and he and Hathaway were safely down the walk, he said, “You’ve an interest in unrequited love now?”

Hathaway gave him an odd look.

“What?”

“It could be relevant, don’t you think? Jealous husband and whatnot.” Hathaway got a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, pausing just short of the street.

“I thought you were trying to quit.” It was one of the few things about Hathaway that annoyed Lewis. He recalled the taste of cigarettes on Hathaway’s tongue. What the hell was he doing, letting this go on? He could be starting a perfectly reasonable courtship with Laura, and instead he was doing this, watching Hathaway’s long fingers curl around the cigarette, watching his mouth exhale. He hadn’t minded the cigarettes when they were kissing. They were a part of James. And he liked James. There was no question. More than ‘liked’, if he was honest with himself.

Hathaway considered the cigarette. “They help me think.”

“You don’t need any help thinking,” Lewis said, and got in the car.

‘ ’

At the end of the day, they stopped at the pub, sitting at their usual table overlooking the river. While he was waiting for Hathaway to return with his pint, Lewis contemplated the ashtray on the table. It was filled with cigarette butts. He could smell them. Cigarettes reminded Lewis of the Chloe Brooks case and Hathaway staying up all night to piece together the timeline, smoking what looked like an entire pack during the course of it. Hathaway had done it for him because the case was important to him. Not everyone did that kind of thing, did they? Not unless they cared for you. How had he never noticed, in all their years together? How long had this been going on?

“You’re very pensive today, sir,” Hathaway said, sitting, setting Lewis’s glass in front of him.

“I’ve got lots on me mind.” The first sip. Good at the end of a long day.

Hathaway took a long drink from his glass of water with lemon. “Haven’t you ever been curious about psychics? Some of them must have abilities.”

“If I can’t see it, I have a hard time believing it. I’ll leave the more spiritual things to you.”

“I’ll make every effort to do them justice.” Hathaway reached over and, slowly, keeping his eye on Lewis, picked up his glass of beer and took a sip.

Lewis stared at his glass. He could see faint marks in the condensation where Hathaway’s fingers had been. Knew where his mouth had been. He picked up the glass and drank. His lips where Hathaway’s had been. Would they kiss later? Hathaway was looking at him. Yes.

“Palmistry. You can see that.” Hathaway studied his left palm. “The life line, here.”

Lewis rolled his eyes. “Lines. Nothing more.”

“Let me see your hand.”

Lewis gave in, laying his right hand, palm up, on the table. James laid his left hand beside it.

“Hm.”

“What?”

Hathaway looked at him. “Your hand says you’ll live a long time. This line here.” With the index finger of his right hand, he pointed out the life line.

Lewis stared at their hands. About palmistry, he had no idea, but he did know that the lines looked like parentheses when Hathaway’s right hand was laid out beside Lewis’s left. A set. The poem.

( needs )

Their hands.

That’s what James had meant, hadn’t he? They completed each other. Hathaway thought of things he didn’t. Or maybe it was the same things but seen differently.

(-Val)

She’d completed him, too.

For a long time after she’d died, it had felt like important parts of him were missing — heart, lungs. He’d even shut Lyn out, his lamb. As if she couldn’t understand. But life did go on, whether you liked it or not. It was different now. He supposed he was glad of what he had. He felt younger in a way, starting new. Lyn having a baby — new life.

And this. It was surprising, this wanting James. Sudden. But nice.

\+ James

(James)

“Parentheses,” he said, knowing Hathaway would understand what he meant.

Hathaway touched their hands together for an instant before withdrawing and looking out onto the river, as if they were two men who had never kissed at all. As if they didn’t know what the other tasted like. As if James wasn’t ( and he wasn’t ).

 

_the end_


End file.
